A wide variety of natural and artificial materials are implanted in humans and animals during the treatment of injuries, conditions and diseases. Among the common uses for these materials are as sutures and as filling material for dental cavities.
A variety of methods are currently used to determine whether materials can prevent bacterial contamination from passing through or around the material. In one method, materials intended to fill cavities in teeth are tested by cleaning out the canals of a natural extracted tooth, sealing the root end of the tooth with the material being tested and filling the center with a test substance. The test substance can be a radioisotope, a dye or bacteria. The sealed tooth is then placed in a container with the sealed end contacting a test medium. Over time, the test medium is checked for presence of the test substance to determine whether the material has effectively prevented the test substance from leaking out of the center of the tooth.
Though useful, this method has several disadvantages. Radioisotopes are difficult to work with and are potentially dangerous. The presence of dye in the test medium does not necessarily indicate that bacteria would breech the test material because dyes have a much smaller molecular size than bacteria. Finally, the presence of bacteria in the test medium can indicate that the testing apparatus itself was contaminated rather than that the material was breeched.
Additionally, wound closure materials are currently tested by looking at the amount of inflamation the material causes in vivo. However, there is no current method for determining whether wound closure material is subject to bacterial contamination or colonization.
Therefore, it would be useful to have a method of testing materials to determine whether they are subject to bacterial contamination or colonization. Further, it would be useful to have another method of testing whether materials can prevent bacteria from passing through or around the material.